


Under My Skin

by aerstwhyle



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Body Horror, Crime, Drugs, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Human AU, Murder Mystery, Mystery, NSFW, Prostitution, Psychological Horror, Purple Prose, Romance, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2018-12-12 21:24:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11745489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerstwhyle/pseuds/aerstwhyle
Summary: ( "I love you," he says."You don't love me," she tells him.  "You're just lonely.")A rookie detective looking for glory investigates the mysterious murder of a woman left to rot on the streets of late night Tokyo.  His search for answers leads him deep into the dark underbelly of the city’s underground nightlife and to the doorstep of one troubled young man by the name of Kaneki Ken.





	1. here, for all of forever

Nina Simone croons softly from somewhere far beyond them, her static voice the only anchor on reality as he falls deeper and deeper into her.  The red of her lipstick and the sting of cheap liquor stains his skin and beneath his fingertips, her body trembles.  He licks the salt of her sweat away from her too pale skin, and here, tucked just under the curve of her jaw, he is content to lay here.

 

There will be bruises tomorrow, in the shape and size of his palms on her breasts and thighs, in the perfect press of his teeth bitten into her neck, but he doesn’t quite care, the more the better.  He lets his fingers trail, down the ridges of her ribcage, over the softness of her belly, and down, down, down, delving between her legs and pressing into the heat of her still quivering cunt.  She doesn’t stop him, her own fingers caught in the dark spun tangle of his hair and voice trembling as softly as her body as she whimpers.

 

He rises on an elbow to watch her face as he fucks her with his fingers, fixated on the way her eyes clench shut and teeth press down on kiss swollen lips.  A vivid blush blooms, reappearing on just cooled cheeks and bleeds under her skin past her chin, over her breast bone, just above her heaving chest.  She throws her head back, dark hair askew against the threadbare cotton sheets, lost in the throes of lust and consumed by his presence, lips parting to say one word.

 

“ _Kaneki_ ,” she breathes his name, voice silk and satin in his ears.

 

He thrusts his fingers into her throbbing cunt harder, faster, the slickness of her arousal glistening on her thighs and dripping off his knuckles as he pistons his first two fingers, in and out, in and out.  Her nails cut rivers into his shoulders, clinging.

 

And he finds, once again, that like this, caught in her and her caught in him, that he would be content to stay, for all of forever.

 

“I love you,” he tells Touka, pressing a lingering kiss on her gasping mouth, tenderly, sweetly.

 

Her voices rises, heightens, crescendos as she crests over the edge of her pleasure, and he watches, breathing hard and trying but failing to not think too hard on how she doesn’t say it back.


	2. idle

Her fingers smooth over his throat, powder soft touch tracing the shape of his adam’s apple as he swallows.  They fall down to his collarbone, following the line to the edge of his shoulder, the lower, too warm fingertips brushing over the tepid skin against his slow beating heart.  She presses her palm there, and breathes a sigh, resting.

 

He turns towards her to catch her mouth, but she only lets him kiss her cheek.

 

“Hey,” she murmurs into his throat, the breath of her words cool.  “I have to go now.”

 

He shakes his head, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her as close as she can come.  Touka makes a disapproving sound, but doesn’t stop him this time when he reaches down to kiss her.

 

“Kaneki,” she starts, but he silences her with another kiss, then another, and another.  He holds her like she is his world and hand blown glass.

 

“Stay,” he tells softly against her mouth.  “Stay with me.”

 

She falls into his hold, as if there is no where else to go, no where else to be, and he smiles as he kisses her once more. 

 

“Okay,” she says with no fire, only defeat.  “Okay.”

 

But she sounds just a little bit sad, so Ken pushes her down on her back, pulls her legs around his hips, and kisses her until she forgets all her worries.  By the time he slides into her—by the time he ruts his throbbing cock none too gently into the cradle of her cunt—she has already all but forgotten the world outside of himself.

 

She won’t be leaving anytime soon.


	3. all in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No sex. Bridge chapter.

It’s hardly fair.

 

She wonders when it—they—this, became the way it is.  She wonders if she had a second chance, if she were to do things just the same.  She wonders, but she does not do.  Perhaps there’s some sick, twisted part of her that likes what’s between them—that likes what is and what isn’t when they are together.  Perhaps, she just so happens to like hurting herself.

 

Yes.  That seems fitting.

 

She still has scars on her wrists from when she was sixteen.  This isn’t any different. 

 

Sixteen… That seems so long ago…

 

“What’re you thinking about?”  Beside her, Kaneki shifts, sliding his arms across her stomach to encircle her waist.  Under the weight of it, she suddenly feels so small.  Touka pulls away, blankets sliding off her naked shoulders and pooling at her hips as she moves to sit against the old headboard. 

 

“Nothing,” she replies dismissively.  Her fingers twitch towards the nightstand, seemingly moving of their own accord as they pull open the drawer and dig pass the trash.  She finds what she’s looking for easily enough, and taps out a cigarette from the old Marley box.  Her shaking hands give her some trouble, but she lights the end with practiced ease.

 

“I thought you quit.”

 

Touka doesn’t look at him as she takes a deep drag from her freshly lit cigarette.

 

“I did,” she mumbles around the tip.  She holds the cigarette away from her hair as she leans over the side of the bed to pick her bra and panty up from the floor.  Kaneki tsks disapprovingly as she slides into each scrap of lace.

 

“You’re going to kill yourself,” comes his soft scold.

 

She shrugs, watching the cloud of smoke leave her her mouth and taint the air.  “Then I guess that makes us even.”

 

Kaneki says nothing after that.

 

Touka stays only until her cigarette is finished.  Without sparing him a glance, she stands and leaves the room.

 

Fair.

 

Ha, what a concept.

 

Life isn’t fucking fair.

 

Deal with it.


	4. unease

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After writing about ten mini-chapters, I finally fleshed out the plot. It's going to be slow, but there is some substance to this story. Be sure to read those tags... Anyway, enjoy and a big thanks to all the people who subscribed and gave kudos!

Touka is already gone by the time he leaves the bed to chase her.  Ken stands by the doorjamb of the apartment door, watching nothing but air, as though she will materialize before him if he stares long and hard enough.  She doesn’t return.

 

Ken feels something uneasy turn in his stomach.

 

He shuts the door and shuffles through the apartment, eyeing the mess of flat champagne and broken beer bottles that is the ratty kitchen.  Perhaps he should feel bad, but he doesn’t care, not really.  The only thing he cares about these days is whether or when Touka will be coming to see him.

 

The old mattress creaks under his weight as it falls onto it, still naked.  Absently, Ken reaches over to touch the already cold side of the bed.  Touka’s side of his bed.  The thought makes him smile.

 

There’s something about her.

 

Something in the way the city lights make her dark eyes sparkle, the way the sun glints off her black silk hair, the way she smiles.  She’s beautiful, so much so that sometimes Ken cannot bear to look at her.  It seems unreal, being able to touch her, love her, hold her, have her.

 

But he does.  And she lets him.

 

It makes him happy.  _She_ , makes him happy.

 

When she smiles her sad little smile, when she speaks in her sad little voice, it makes Ken want to break her more and more, wear her down harder and harder so that when she finally cracks, he can put her back together again, piece by piece.  But Touka is a wild thing, brash and untamed, she is not something to be caged or paraded, and no matter what Ken forces into her hands, she remains the way she is, proud, aloof, and a little bit sad.  She can hold herself high, in a way that makes Ken fear her departure from his life every waking second.

 

It drives him _mad_.

 

It makes him want to tear her off her arms and her legs so that she may never leave him, cover her ears and shut her eyes, so that all she may see or hear is him and only him.  It’s—it is—

 

— _demonic, heinous, evil_ —

 

— ** _romantic_**.

 

Touka makes him feel things—she makes him _feel_.

 

He is alive when he is with her.  He is real, and he is here.  Addiction is not strong enough a word to describe it, he can’t get enough, he’s lost in the shape of her, and is utterly happy at the prospect of never finding a way out of the puzzle that is Touka Kirishima.

 

The same, however, cannot be said about her.

 

And oh, does it drive him mad.

 

But Ken has patience.  He’s learned from his mother—always a good boy, yes, Ken is a good boy—how to be good, how to be kind and how to wait because _good things come to good people_.  He can wait.

 

He will wait.

 

Ken smiles to himself, face half hidden in the sheets that still smells like Touka’s perfume and lets his eyes fall closed.


	5. & it begins

But good things always come to an end.

 

Happy endings, after all, don’t exist.

 

Ken learns this the day he finds his beautiful Touka on the streets of late night Tokyo, dead.


	6. ONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Urie muses on the trouble that is finding someone who means nothing to nobody.

 

* * *

  **one; something to somebody**

* * *

 

You’d think that when a girl goes missing, people would try to find her.  But there’s one major flaw in that logic.  People only go looking for girls they’ve noticed to be gone, and in order for people to notice, that girl’s gotta mean something to someone.  Now, if that girl meant nothing to nobody, who would go looking?

 

Exactly.

 

No one.

 

So when Touka Kirishima was found, three days dead, washed up in the dirty drains of late night Tokyo, one thousand dollar heels hanging off her size six feet and red lipstick still perfectly painted on, it was no wonder to Urie why no one went looking for her.

 

What was a wonder for him, however, was the fact that the killer hadn’t taken her clothes.  Couture shoes, couture dress, five crumpled hundred dollar notes shoved between her breasts, and all still there with her, clinging to her slowly rotting corpse.  Even the diamond studs in her ears were untouched.

 

There were three types of murder, three types of murderers.  One killed for the sport, carefully detailed plans, times down to the millisecond, while the second killed for the thrill, unfortunate meetings in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The third killed in the heat of the moment, a bad temper with a bad habit of showing it.  In the case of Touka Kirishima, Urie deducted that murder type one was the most likely.  Murderer type two would have taken her things.  Would have fucked her before it, too.  Murderer type three would have hidden the body.  Maybe taken it home and shoved it under the floorboards.

 

Urie reached in his pocket for his lighter, his fingers stiff from the cold.

 

Her expensive clothes and hidden money suggested that she was a streetwalker, but this intersection rarely was a haunt for perverts, too close to the suburbs and too far from the downtown district.  If she was a prostitute, then she was one ballsy prostitute, looking for work out where middle class kids on walked home.

 

He pressed his knuckle to his lip, cigarette forgotten as the last of his smoke dissipated into the winter chill.

 

This was one of the problems when you found someone who wasn’t being missed.  No one knew them.  No one cared.  And if no one cared, then what would you gain from finding the killer?  Not much and certainly not enough to convince Urie to waste his time.

 

Urie sighed.

 

Had he been a greater man, he would have put out his cancer stick and actually used his pretty little head—but he wasn’t.  He was simple man with a simple goal—promotion.  And this—

 

—a dead girl no one cared about with a murderer no one wanted gone—

 

—wouldn’t get him anywhere closer to that goal.  The sheer amount of effort would not equate in the amount of glory.

 

It was decided then.

 

Urie pulled his phone from the depths of his ever trusty pocket, intent on calling his superior and submitting a report that very night.

 

At least, that was the plan.

 

As the dial tone rang, Urie watched with carefully disinterested eyes as his (late) partner (mortal rival), Takeomi, rushed from his (shitty) car to kneel beside the corpse.  And it was here, right here, watching his partner (rival), look at the corpse like it was someone to be missed, that Urie was struck with the need to act.

 

Takeomi knew this girl.

 

She meant something to him.

 

Urie would be damned if he let that (asshole) man take the glory.

 

So he ended his call, shoved his phone into his pocket, and walked back over to the corpse of Touka Kirishima.


	7. TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Jane Doe in the modern era where smartphones and social media ruled the world.

* * *

  **two; untitled**

* * *

 

An ever persistent hum of the water cooler permeated the silence, broken only by the the near silent pitter patter of rain on glass.  The rhythmic ticks of an old clock served as the only reminder of time, which seemed, to our not so humble Urie, to be slipping away much too quickly.  Here, alone in the dim office of Tokyo Police, surrounded not by busy bodies, but by only the stench of stale coffee and old sugar dipped pastries, he sat, hands working furiously over his keyboard.  Careful, as always, he studiously ignored the wet drip of water behind him.  The mystery that was the death of one Touka Kirishima would not solve itself.

 

“Hey.”  Takeomi’s voice broke the spell of Urie’s manic typing.  Urie sent a venomous glare to his partner, annoyed at having his productivity slowed to an unwanted stop.  Takeomi only stared blankly back, the anger in the moment easily rolling past him like smoke around brick. 

 

“The autopsy results are in,” he said simply.  Then, after a pause, “It’s cold in here.”

 

Urie gave no reply.

 

Takeomi stared at the empty room at large, then gave in.

 

The wrinkled manila folder in Takeomi’s hand slid onto Urie’s desk, looking desperately out of place on the immaculate stained oak.  Urie picked it up with impatient hands and opened it, pointedly ignoring his partner.  There’s a standstill, both too stubborn to give in first.

 

Urie twitched.

 

Takeomi fidgeted.

 

One breath, two—then Takeomi sighed.

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he offered, a weak olive branch in the face of an uninterested party, but trying nonetheless.  Takeomi shifted his weight from right to left foot, waited a beat, then took his leave, the jingle of car keys and antiseptic hand soap following in his wake.

 

Urie couldn’t help the brief simmering of jealousy that crawled under his skin as he watched Takeomi exit through the hall.  Takeomi was returning home.  To his wife.  Both of which, Urie did not have for himself.  Angrily clicking his pen, Urie buried that brief moment of jealousy.  Work, work, work.  Yes.  Work had to be done.  

 

Behind him, water drip, drip, dripped.

 

It was cold.  Unbearably so.

 

But Urie ignored it.

 

The murder of Touka Kirishima would not solve itself, after all.

 

And so, he put his pen down, reopened the manila folder, and began to read.

 

/ / 

 

Murdered, mutilated, and left to rot in a ditch on the corner of 12th and 13th.  The victim was female, early twenties, of east Asian descent, and most importantly, unnamed.  The tags on her clothing was meticulously removed, the brands rubbed off and no wallet or any other identifying cards were found on or near the body.  A Jane Doe in the modern era where smart phones and credit cards and social media ruled the world.  Nearly unheard of.

 

Takeomi had tried everything.

 

Fingerprint match?  Nothing in found in the database.  Same for DNA.

 

Jane Doe was nobody, it seemed, from nowhere with no one.

 

But Takeomi knew better—because he knew her—he knew that face.  He’d seen it before, tucked quietly away in the photo album his wife kept on their bookshelf, folded and creased within the pocket of her wallet.  Yoriko had never spoken of her.  He’d never asked.  Now he sorely wished he’d had beforehand.

 

Because really, how do you tell your wife that the girl whose photo she carries in her wallet—is dead?

 

How do you tell her that she was stabbed, once in the gut and twice in the ankles so that she couldn’t run away?  How do you tell her that someone had carved the word whore onto her thighs, that she was cut open and had all her organs removed?  That the murderer had placed exactly seven human hearts inside instead?

 

How can Takeomi tell Yoriko that all of it was done while the victim was most likely still alive?

 

How?

 

Just how.

 

He contemplated this exact thought as he unlocked the front door and walked through the threshold of their home.  His wife was none the wiser, peeking out at him from the kitchen with a bright grin.

 

“Welcome home,” she sing-songed, nearly dancing over to him in her glee to see him.

 

He let her kiss him sweetly on the cheek, let her take his coat and usher him to the table.  She was so happy.  He wondered why.  Wondered if he had it in him to tell her.

 

“You’re gloomy today,” Yoriko remarked as she slid into her seat across from him.  “What’s wrong?”

 

Takeomi opened his mouth.  Closed it.  Opened.  Then closed.

 

He couldn’t do it.

 

He just couldn’t do it.

 

So he said nothing, and leaned over to kiss his wife until both she and himself forgot all their worries.

 

Tomorrow.

 

He would ask her tomorrow.

 

/ /

 

Urie lived exactly one block away from the police department.  He walked home in the evenings and late nights.  He walked to work in the mornings.  He walked to the grocery store on Friday and to the gym on Sunday.  He was near everything and anything.  It made him feel less alone. 

 

But today, as he walked alone down the cracked concrete sidewalk with nothing but the flicker of the streetlamps to guide the way, he found that even here, he couldn’t be rid of it.  The loneliness.  Hyperaware and hypersensitive, he realized that he was completely and utterly alone.  The click, click, clack of high heels echoed off the old brick walled apartments and spackled 24/7 convenience stores.  No one looked out their windows.  No one was out on the streets.

 

It was cold.

 

He paused at the front door of his apartment building.

 

The click of heels stopped.

 

Urie reminded himself to breathe.  He was a man.  He was brave.  He could do this.

 

With a creak, the door opened and lightening quick, he zipped inside, the door slamming hard enough behind him that it shook the building.  A few disgruntled cries followed, but nothing else came.

 

He started up the stairs.

 

The click of heels followed.

 

Urie breathed slowly, careful, calm—a façade.

 

 _Inhale_ , he reminded himself, _exhale_.

 

 _Don’t look_.

 

He hurried up the steps, so fast that he might as well have ran, but the steady, slow click of high heels followed at the same agonizing pace, never too far, never too close.

 

 _Don’t look_.

 

The key stuck in the lock of his door as he fumbled.

 

 _Don’t look_.

 

He slammed it shut behind him.

 

 _Don’t look_.

 

The place was so, so cold.  He spun on his heel to make his way to his bathroom but stopped in his tracks.

 

 _Don’t look_.

 

He looked.

 

There, sitting on his black leather couch like she belonged, was Touka Kirishima, her red lipstick perfectly painted on, diamond studs sparking in the low city lights streaming through the window.  She was pretty, and as she gave him a wan smile, he could have almost believed that she was alive.  If only, that is, if it weren’t for the gaping hole in her stomach and the blood that dripped down her legs, past her black patent leather Louboutins and onto his waxed oak floor.  He could see it—he could see _inside_ her body—the way her lungs expanded and shrunk, the way her shriveled stomach pulsed, and even the layer of shiny yellow fat that lined the red muscle which peeked from the sides of the slit. 

 

“I’m not ready,” he said out loud.

 

She watched him, something soft and sad in her eyes.

 

“I’m not ready,” he repeated.

 

Then, louder, “ _ **LEAVE ME ALONE!**_ ”

 

But Touka Kirishima only looked at him with that sad, sad look she wore so well.

 

* * *

 

 

 


	8. city lights sparkle

“If I jumped here, do you think I’d fly like a bird?”

 

City lights sparkle in the late autumn sky, the never sleeping citizens of Tokyo in constant movement far down below the balcony.  Fierce wind whips his skin, broken glass crunches under the weight of one thousand dollar heels, forgotten flat rose champagne wasted in a lonely pair of fluted glasses—the unmistakable smudge of red lipstick on the lip of one—a useless glassless glass door shut from the other end of the balcony.  It is here, that Touka watches her lover with wary eyes.

 

“Kaneki,” she says, so softly that it could have just been the wind, “what are you doing?”

 

Ken blinks—once, twice, thrice—and away his daze falls.  He takes one step back from the edge.

 

“Come here,” says Touka from the other side of the wrought iron rail.

 

Ken turns to look at her, and thinks to himself—

 

_I love you—_

_I hate you—_

_You’re beautiful—_

_You’re a liar—_

_Why don’t you love me?_

 

Then, quieter—

 

_Why don’t you love me like you used to?_

 

“What changed?” he asks her.

 

Touka frowns.  Ken waits.

 

“Nothing,” she answers, but he already knows that this is a lie, even if Touka herself doesn’t know it yet.

 

He shakes his head.

 

“What changed?” he asks again.

 

Touka’s patience wears thin.

 

“Kaneki,” she demands like she owns him—and perhaps she does, “come _here_.”

 

She opens her arms, beckoning, and Ken wants to go to her, yes, he does, but—he—just—can’t—

 

 _It would be romantic in the truest sense_ , he thinks.

 

He imagines how she will mourn him—how she will hold his clothes and trace the shape of his face on his photographs—how she would never love another—how she will beg to be buried with him, alive or not.  He imagines a reality where she loves him like nothing else—a reality where she wants him like a want unlike any other, so much so that she will sometimes wish that she had never discovered it—that she had never known love the way he’d taught her for no matter what she does—

 

_She will never be rid of him._

 

Like him, her.

 

They will write poetry of them the way he writes poetry of her.  They will speak of a love so pure that the heavens poured their tears down to earth in remorse.  The story of him and his Touka, will be nothing short of a legend.

 

There is panic in her dark, dark eyes.

 

Her fingers dig into his skin, biting.

 

He is alive.

 

He is here.

 

“Don’t be like this, Kaneki,” she pleads with him, so unlike herself.  “Don’t be like this.”

 

And for once, Ken decides that he is tired of lying to himself.

 

Simply, he answers, “I’m always like this.”

 

Tears fall from her beautiful crystal eyes.

 

Ken cannot understand.

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy :)


End file.
